Descending Into A Novel-Chapter 64:First Mission (11)

"Who are you?"

It was the first question she had asked during their fight. When her mouth opened, Ellen could briefly glimpse a forked tongue rather then a regular human tongue.

"...nobody."

She frowned, "Covinster? Depont? Floriza’s Dark Predators?"

Interesting guesses by Lucy, Ellen knew the evil wrongdoings of the Depont family quite well. But the Covinster family had always been one of the better ones. She even accused Ellen of being her own family’s secret forces.

Although it was hard to say better when nearly all the families were all horrible. It was a low bar. They maintained their current positions through nefarious means, assassinations and bribery were commonplace enough that most didn’t even bat an eye at it.

"Doesn’t matter, I can’t have you spreading what you saw today. "

She lunged at Ellen again, electricity sparking from her body.

Ellen, however just stood still. Letting Lucy get within a few meters of her.

Right before her scaly arms managed to reach Ellen’s body however, the roof of the warehouse they were fighting on proceeded to cave in on itself slightly.

Right where Lucy had planted her foot.

She had already received a signal from Raymond just now while talking. He had finished his preparations and was ready to join.

Ellen herself, had to hold back for fear of drawing too much attention. Lucy also seemed to be holding back for the same reason.

With a creak, the metal sheets that made up the roof bent inwards. Lucy falling through and into the warehouse.

Where Raymond was waiting for her.

While she was still mid air and falling. Caught unprepared by the sudden change. Raymond raised his right hand at her.

With a snap of his fingers, Lucy was covered in a white semi translucent ball. The several old and new engravings Raymond set up combining to help him.

’Lockdown Sphere.’

A spell from the grey magic discipline. Which encompassed all the more neutral spells.

This spell in particular was a relatively common and easy to counter spell in Raymond’s home dimension.

But here, it was probably the first ever usage of such a spell.

Lucy’s eyes widened as she tried to break through the sphere. It felt hard for her to use her mana properly and maintain her Arts.

A mini thunderclap rang out as she mustered up a boot of electricity. Frying a small hole into the sphere, only for it to be quickly sealed again.

Raymond made another hand incantation, as if he was holding an invisible ball in his hands—before inversing it. Spreading his fingers outwards.

The sphere around Lucy pulsed slightly, before expanding in size. Raymond’s engravings snapping her of her strength.

Closing her eyes, Lucy soon fell unconscious. Her body going limp while suspended inside the floating sphere.

In just a few minutes, Lucy had been taken down by Raymond. Unable to even retaliate against him.

Letting out a small sigh of relief, he carefully lowered the lockdown sphere onto the ground. Dispelling it, and leaving Lucy unconscious on the ground.

Her blue hair slowly shifted back into it’s original brown tone, the scales disappearing from her body as her Arts were stopped.

Putting his right hand onto her head, he casted several more spells to restrain her body and mana. Tying her body up with rope from Ellen.

A small blue snake, around the length of his entire arm crawled out from her clothes. Hissing as it looked at him and Ellen.

Immobilizing it with a single spell, he tied the snake into a knot.

Finally, he checked all the rope on Lucy— making sure it was secure. Before casting another spell to awaken her.

She awoke with a gasp, adrenaline rushing through her system as she remembered where she was and what happened.

Seeing her body tied up, she squirmed slightly before quickly realizing it was futile. Her mana refusing to listen to her commands.

Looking up at the him and Ellen, dressed in all black. She warily asked.

"What do you want from me?"

"We’re going to ask a series of questions, you are to answer each and every one of them truthfully. We have methods available to know whether or not you have lied. Furthermore, I am also knowledgeable of memory reading. "

The last part was a not so subtle threat to Lucy.

Memory magic was pretty underdeveloped in this dimension, mainly because to practice it. You needed living targets. Every race and every person was different after all.

Memory reading and memory manipulation thus often caused a lot of negative effects. If you were lucky, just a bad headache. But entering a coma or becoming a vegetable was more common.

Her face paled significantly, understanding the implications of his words.

He pointed at Cador, who was still sleeping.

"What exactly is he? A human or a wolf?"

She stuttered out a bit before answering him. "He...I-I don’t know! "

"Are you a demon contractor?"

"What? No!"

"Do you have any intentions of becoming a demon contractor?"

"Are you crazy?! No!"

"Why did you decide to join the acadeny?"

"To learn? And become stronger? Why else would I go to the academy?"

She seemed more confused rather then scared at this point. Answering each of their questions with a puzzled expression on her face.

Aftrr asking ten questions, Raymond sighed, putting his right gloved hand onto her throat.

"Forced Truth."

Another grey magic spell. The effect was to force the victim’s next ten words to be entirely truthful. Unable to say any lies whatsoever.

"From now on, answer using only yes or no. Was your answer to the first question a truth?"

"Yes."

"Was your answer to the second question a truth?"

"Yes." 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

By the end of it, she had really answered truthfully to all of their questions.

Ellen intervened before Raymond could say anything.

Pointing at Cador, she asked. "Explain everything that you know about him."

"I don’t know! He saved my life when there was an assassination attempt on me, I brought him back home as a pet and when I fed him a potential stone. He just turned into a human all of a sudden!"

A potential stone? Those things were as valuable as elixirs! Able to increase the potential of anyone who consumed them!

It was one of the most expensive resources, able to naturally increase the potential score of any young, low ranked individual with no consequences.

If Ellen ate one, her potential score would be able to improve from a 97 to a 98! And if someone with a potential score of 20 ate it, they would improve into the thirties!

As for why Ellen got such a low improvement, well the law of diminishing returns existed. But also because, when your potential score was already so high, it was hard to improve it any further. It’s hard to improve upon perfection/ near-perfection. Each extra digit past the nineties already improved an individuals talent massively anyways.

"Where did you get the potential stone? And why would you waste it on Cador!?"

"I got it from an auction! And what do you mean a waste?!"

Ignoring his and Lucy’s banter. Ellen furrowed her brows slightly, asking.

"How did you manage to afford a potential stone?"

"It wasn’t sold as a potential stone! The auctioneer marketed it as some kind of unbreakable rock! Ashfield went crazy when he smelled it so I bought it and it just revealed itself to him!"

"What happened when he ate it?"

"He suddenly became really sick when he did eat it. When I woke up, he just looked like this!"

Raymond was actually at a loss for words when Lucy revealed how she obtained the potential stone.

’Woah! Are you the secret protagonist?!’

Attending an auction and managing to discover a super valuable item which was being sold off super cheap due to a stroke of luck! If that wasn’t a protagonist thing to do then he didn’t know what a protagonist was anymore.

Ahem, maybe he had been spending too much time reading those novels lately.

"He looked exactly like this?"

"Well...he looked like this but he had wolf ears and a tail. So I got a disguise for him so he could blend in with me at the academy. I was scared that the academy or others might take him away from me!"

Walking over to Cador, Raymond put his hand on him. Running a quick magic scan, to his surprise. He indeed found that Cador was wearing some kind of disguise. A very high quality disguise as well, similar to what Audrina was using. Raymond himself couldn’t even sense it until he was informed by Lucy.

"Last question...why did you choose to make him a shadow? Why not just a close friend or something?"

"I got the idea from these two classmates of mine, Raymond Vance and Ellen Grace. You’ve heard of them right? I needed a way to make sure that Ashfield would stay close to me at all times without raising any suspicion."

Raymond and Ellen both got a pretty good idea of what went down now.

In the previous timeline, Lucy. After Ashfield’s transformation, felt scared that others might take him away. It was the first ever known instance of such a thing ever occurring after all. She declined to go to the academy due to this fear. Choosing to be homeschooled instead.

But now, she had gotten the idea from Raymond and Lucy. Choosing to disguise Ashfield as her shadow to keep him safe.

Raymond scratched his head, weren’t there too many people in disguises?

Himself, Thomas, Audrina and Cador.

That made for four people who all wore some kind of disguise! Even those multiplayer roleplaying games didn’t have this many people who pretended to be something else!